


Fight to Kill

by J_33



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Badass Natasha, Cap 2, F/M, Major Spoilers, Sorry I just had to, Steve Needs a Hug, This movie will kill me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1334875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_33/pseuds/J_33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything that you once fought for turned out to be a lie, and now staring back at you are the haunted eyes of the man you saw fall off a train seventy years ago, the man that you once called your best friend, and the fact that you might not be able to save him scares you the most.  A soldier, a spy, and a stranger team up to stop a rising conspiracy before it's too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight to Kill

They’ve gone on a few mission together, but nothing like this. Missions are simple; sure there’s the matter of life and death, but that is all. Save the hostages, get the data, kill the target, and do the job. There’s nothing more and nothing less. It’s black and white, gold and bronze, night and day. And somehow the very reason you thought that there was nothing more makes it all the more complicated.

Now as you look around at the countless bodies on the floor of the SHIELD elevator, the people who you worked with, those who you thought were on your side, those who you thought had your back; you no longer see the black and white, the good and the bad, all you see is the red, the haze that once fueled your fight, now drowns you in confusion, and you feel lost. There’s a faint burning sensation stinging your abdomen, but you don’t care about the pain. Pain is manageable, pain reminds us that we’re living, but you know that you should be dead. You should have died the minute you hit the ice, the minute your heart stopped beating, but that would be too easy wouldn’t it?

You’ve been asleep for seventy years. You went to bed during World War 2 and woke up to technology, and everyone you loved being dead or lost. Those you once fought with stopped fighting a while back, and Peggy can’t even remember what we were once fighting for. You visit her in the nursing home every now and then between missions, and you turn around to get her a cup of water, and when you come back it’s like you’ve just arrived. You feel selfish for thinking this but being on rewind almost seems better than being on fast forward because even though she’ll never make any new memories, at least the bad ones won’t get any worse.

You tried so hard to look on the bright side of things. At first you thought you were helping people, making the country you once cherished and risked your life for a better place, but now you only feel like Fury’s janitor; picking up after his mess. You look at Natasha and wonder how she does it. You’ve read her file, you know the things she’s done, the places she’s seen, and while one might think that you should hate this Russian spy who hurt so many people, you can only envy her. Because real courage isn’t fighting against the monsters in the world, but fighting against the monsters in yourself, and each and every day, you see her doing that. You see the way people whisper about her when she walks down the hall, and you see that she hears them too, though she’ll never admit it, and you know that it would be so easy for her to turn around and say something, or leave and never come back, but she does neither of those things. Is it because she wants to be the bigger person? You don’t think so. You think it’s because she truly thinks that if her coworkers are only talking about her behind her back, then it has been a good day, and that both terrifies you and makes you proud.

Now she’s staring at you, and you’re staring back, and you are hoping, no you are praying to god that she isn’t one of them. That she isn’t part of the corrupt organization that have turned heroes into traitors, because if anything over these past few months you have begun to think of her as a friend, and you’d hate for her to become your enemy now. You’re asking her to tell you the truth, and she’s giving you the look that she had before she jumped off your shield in New York, the one like she has nothing to lose, but this one is different, because instead of the carefree attitude like before you can sense the tension in her face, the way her hands are shaking subtly, and then you remember how she never fights back, only because when she does she fights to kill and that’s not who she is anymore, or who she wants to be. She has secrets, and you know that her existence is basically one huge lie but when she mutters something about only acting like she knows everything all the time you exhale the breath that you didn’t know you were holding in.

***

You’ve seen war, and death, and blood, and you know what it feels like to have nothing left to keep you on the ground, but she is all of those things, and that makes you feel ironically safer. You’re some boy scout from Brooklyn and she’s a missionary, and now you’re both fugitives running from a corrupt system of people who you don’t know who you can trust, and you can only wish that this ends better then it begun. 

Bucky’s alive, but he’s trapped inside an assassin that Natasha calls the Winter Soldier, and Fury’s dead. You can’t remember the last time you woke up and weren’t scared. Now you’re hiding out at Sam Wilson’s house, a mere stranger who believes in you the most. He said he was just a pilot, but he has wings, and any other day you might find that hard to believe, but right now you are just thrilled he hasn’t tried to kill you yet. You look at Natasha and remember the way a tear rolled down her cheek when she saw Fury’s body and you can’t help but admire her. She said something about him always seeing the bigger picture of it all, and then you realize that all this really is, is a game. The Winter Soldier, and you call him that because you refuse to believe that when all this time you thought that Bucky was in Heaven, he was really in hell and you feel so guilty that you want to rip your hair out, he just wants to play a game called Let’s Kill Captain America, and now it’s your turn to roll the dice. 

You ask her how she does it, how she lives with so much darkness and doesn’t let it affect her, and she says it’s all she’s ever known. That same night when you wake up in a cold sweat after seeing Bucky’s face, seeing his haunted eyes, the same eyes that held a knife to your throat that same day, you realize that if he is darkness than darkness is all you’ve ever known too. At that moment, the sun hasn’t even risen yet, and the birds are still asleep, and you’ve spent your whole life being a good man, an honest man, a man that someone could trust, you think that you would throw that all away for some peace. 

Now you are in a crowded mall, with Natasha by your side, wearing clothes that aren’t yours, and hoping that the cops don’t recognize you. It’s almost funny to think that not even a week earlier she was picking you up from a park in her black corvette for a mission, making some joke about the Smithsonian, and now they’re on the run. She says something about when you’re on the run, you walk, you never run, but you don’t seem to be absorbing any of that because now you’re going down the escalator, and she’s telling you to put your arms around her and laugh at her joke, and now she’s kissing you, and it’s been so long since you’ve last been kissed, but then you remember that this is all a cover, and how this is only happening to hide from those looking for them, and though you would blame the tightness in your chest on the adrenaline, you know deep down that that’s all a lie. Though these last few days you’ve realized that you don’t know what the truth is anymore.

Then the bomb went off, and you had your serum to protect you, but Natasha is only human. Yes, a manipulative, badass, sneaky, lethal, dark and twisty one, but human, none the less, and she is buried under ruble, and her eyes are closed. By the time you get her out, she come to, but she’s not protesting when you lift her into your arms, and that’s when you know that this is serious. Later you’ll see her bandaging some of her wounds, because when you asked if she needed any help she got all defensive, and you see the way she winces slightly every time she takes a deep breath, and you remember kissing her, and you remember that tear rolling down her cheek, and her only ever knowing darkness, and you think maybe just maybe that’s because she is the light.

***

You were once just a skinny kid from Brooklyn doing what you could to get by without an asthma attack, and you remember so vividly wishing you were given the body that your heart was made for, but now you would trade all this power for a second chance. There are millions of innocent lives on the line, and you only have two people on your side. You once lead a goddamn army, and now a goddamn army is searching for you. You don’t know how things got so screwed up, but they did, and now it might just be too late. You’d be perfectly fine if it was only your life on the line, but it’s not; it’s Natasha’s, and Sam’s, and Bucky’s too, if he even has any life left. They say with power comes great responsibility, but that’s a lie. With power just comes regret, and guilt, because all the power in the world can’t save your best friend, and the fact that your best friend might not even be able to be saved makes it all the more worse.

Now dressed in an old fashioned version of your uniform, the red, white, and blue only reminding you of those you’ve lost, instead of the country you once fought to save, you see your friend, who now in some twisted lesson of fate is your enemy, and he’s fighting, and shooting, and giving everything he’s got because he’s been brainwashed, and tortured for years, and if killing you is his mission, then you are going to let him because yes you would kill him to save millions of lives, but never just to save your own. Your shield can protect you from bullets, and knives, but not from the pain you see reflecting in the man who was once your best friend’s eyes. You’re taking hit after hit, and you can’t help but recall how Natasha never once said a word about those who talked behind her back, even though she heard them, because she fought to kill, and she couldn’t kill people who couldn’t fight back, and even though Bucky is fighting and he’s fighting hard, in a way he can’t fight back. Yes, he can fight against men of all kind, but against his mind he would never win, so for you to fight a man trapped inside himself, with nothing but orders and lies to make up his identity would be a sin, and one that you could never forgive yourself for.

You almost died, and when you wake up in some hospital bed with Natasha and Sam by your side looking more tired than usual you understand that for the first time in your life you might have just lived. They tell you that the Winter Soldier is gone, but that Bucky is still out there somewhere, and that’s good enough for you. SHIELD is destroyed, and you don’t know where to go from here, but that doesn’t seem to really matter right now. Natasha asks you what you want her to be, and says that she will be it, and you say a friend, because after these last few days you’ve realized that when it comes down to it, a friend is the only thing that can destroy you, but bring you together at the same time, and sometimes you find it in those you least expected.

Steve Rogers may be a man out of place, fighting for a cause already lost, but another day free, is another good day to him, which is the only real reason still worth fighting for.

**Author's Note:**

> this movie is so close yet so far, and I really needed to write something to keep myself from curling up into a fetal position thinking about this movie, so I hope you enjoyed, and feel free to request any one shots that you'd like me to write:) 
> 
> THANKS NFOR READING AND REVIEW!!!!


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